“The real enemy is the Tea Party –- let’s remember that,” said Rep. Frederica Wilson of Miami Gardens, host of the meeting and jobs fair. “The Tea Party holds Congress hostage … They have one goal in mind, and that’s to make President Obama a one-term president.” … [Waters] also said: “We have to stand up and fight. It’s fight time … We’re not afraid of the tea party … In this struggle, we have to define who we are, what the president is doing and not let our voices be overshadowed by the tea party.”
HAGERSTOWN, Maryland
Reporting live from this previously peaceful community, mere miles from the epicenter of the devastating 5.9 earthquake:
Regular readers may notice that this emotionally traumatized victim bears a remarkable resemblance to my 8-year-old daughter, Reagan. And regular readers may also notice that the Earthquake Victims Relief Fund bears a remarkable resemblance to my tip jar.
UPDATE IV: At the Earthquake Relief Center — which bears a remarkable resemblance to our local convenience store — the heroic young survivors recover from the emotional trauma wrought by this historic tragedy:
“What’s the big deal about Ahmadinejad anyway? … I’m not saying Ahmadinejad is Mother Teresa reincarnate or anything. But let’s face it: Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, even Vladimir Putin, all have less blood on their hands than Bush does. The international public enemy #1 is the president of the United States of America.”
— David Goodner, Sept. 25, 2007
Ambush interviews and “gotcha” questions aren’t my style. One of the most noxious developments of the TV era is reporters stalking politicians in order to get them on camera refusing to answer questions. This is a tactic of “reporting” that was first popularized by 60 Minutes in the 1970s: The shady surgeon who has been hit with 27 malpractice suits, covering his face and shouting “no comment” as he is chased across the parking lot by Mike Wallace and a CBS camera crew.
Should we treat politicians like that? Except in cases where they’re trying to get away with shenanigans (e.g., Anthony Weiner), I say “no.” The ambush interview is too much like trying to make news, rather than report news. I don’t like it when lefties do the “gotcha” trick with Republicans, and don’t think it behooves conservatives to do it to Democrats. However, when lefties go after Democrats . . .
No, I still don’t like it, and “citizen journalists” doing Mike Wallace imitations? That’s bad mojo. Politicians (and their security details) aren’t likely to permit bloggers to have access if such access results in ugly confrontation and outright harassment.
Politicians don’t win the Iowa caucus with showy, one-off events. They have to conduct the retail politicking that the declared candidates are currently conducting all across the state. That means going to small events as well as large ones, traveling through all of the small towns and shaking hands, and asking voters now to caucus for them in 2012.
Exactly: Let us stipulate that any event with Sarah Palin would be “large” by comparison with, say, the 50 or so voters who showed up for Rick Santorum’s barn party. Still, the fact remains that Iowa caucus-goers prefer to vote for candidates they’ve met face-to-face, and the winner will likely have shaken 50,000 hands by Feb. 6. As Ed says, “Palin would need to win Iowa to have a path to the nomination,” and if she’s going to win it, she’ll have to get busy pretty soon to catch up with the handshaking that’s already been done by her rivals.
A certain bog dweller certainly seems to think so. He has a few other interesting picks, as well. Conspicuously absent from Trog’s list is Da Tech Guy, whose debate question would involve some sort of dessert pastry.
During my Iowa trip, I got lots of photos and videos I wasn’t able to upload at the time due to connectivity issues and the very hectic schedule. One of the items that never made it to the blog was an incident at the Iowa State Fair where DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz got heckled offstage by an angry liberal. I was able to phone in a report to The American Spectator, but never got around to uploading video of the incident.
The video is about two minutes, and at about the 40-second mark, you see Wasserman-Schultz say, “The difference between Barack Obama and congressional Democrats and all the Republican presidential candidates is that all of them committed to end Medicare as we know it . . . and privatize Social Security.” This elicits a predictable chorus of boos from her Democratic audience, but it also inspired the angry liberal heckler – you’ll see him in a yellow T-shirt — to start yelling that the debt deal “put Medicare on the chopping block!” He also yells: “Stop caving in to Wall Street!” Watch:
As you see, at the 1:15 mark, Democrat loyalists try to shout down the heckler by chanting, “Debbie! Debbie!” But at the 1:30 mark, Yellow Shirt starts heckling again, which prompts Wasserman-Schultz to cut straight to her peroration – something about the great “victory” that awaits in 2012 – and end her speech well before her allotted 15 minutes were up.
Following her offstage in hope that she would hold a brief press conference, I then caught the denouement as other angry liberals – the first one wearing a “Catholic Worker” T-shirt – interrogated her about the same basic issue. Wasserman-Schultz evidently knew this guy, addressing him as “David.”
The exchange was interrupted periodically by the congresswoman’s entourage, but as much as was audible went like this:
WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: “As someone who represents a district in South Florida, there’s nobody who fights harder to protect Medicare . . .”
FIRST LIBERAL: “You voted for the debt-ceiling bill . . . . Why don’t you have five minutes to sit down and talk?”
ENTOURAGE WOMAN: “Because, David, it’s not built in. Don’t act like this is — you know how . . .”
WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: “I’m happy to talk to you . . .”
FIRST LIBERAL: “You talk the talk, but your actions don’t back up the talk.”
WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: “Oh, you know, with all due respect . . .”
FIRST LIBERAL: “Obama was the one that put cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the table.”
WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: “That is simply not true and you know it and that is an unacceptable …”
SECOND LIBERAL: “He said everything was on the table.”
FIRST LIBERAL: “And you voted for the debt-ceiling bill, Debbie – you voted for that bill.”
WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: “Because we needed to come together to address our deficit …”
SECOND LIBERAL: “Why is it always Democrats compromising with other Democrats?”
It was a very enlightening glimpse at how a powerful Democrat – herself a leader of “progressives” in Congress – cannot satisfy the implacable demands of her own party’s left-wingers. Just something to keep in mind, next time someone tries to tell you that Republicans are the party beholden to fringe extremist wingnuts.
